In Quest of El Dorado

by Stephen Graham

One Sunday some years ago Pickett bull dogged the bull. He was at the entrance to the ring with his horse, and he had had enough to drink. A number of white cowboys, Texans, were about him, encouraging him, and they wagered him to ride into the ring in the midst of the fight. Then the humorous and loquacious Pickett, who was a famous character, spurred his horse across the arena, got the bull a-running, and then, overtaking him at a gallop, leapt from his saddle on to the bull's horns. The impetus of the gallop he imparted to his wrists as he twisted the horns and laid the fierce animal with a thud flat on his flanks on the arena sand—to the uproarious cheers of the Americans present and the prolonged, angry hisses of the Mexicans.

Well, that is bull dogging, the Wild West's substitute sport for the Spanish corrida. I watched it and steer riding for hours in the cattle ring of the cowboys, and I suppose it would be difficult to find a sport with a greater thrill in it—to see a cowboy on a fine horse going full tilt after a frightened steer that has got the start of him—and how these clumsy animals can go it when once they think they are being chased!—neck to neck, horse and bullock, dark mane and long horn, dirt splashing upward as they go, cowboys looking on and laughing and shouting, "Let go that horse—on'm, cowboy!" and then the leap in air and the rider clutching the brown bovine neck or actually sitting with one thigh across a madly plunging horn, and the bullock going on with him, trailing him, wiping the ground with him for fifty yards or more, if the cowboy has not been able to impart the momentum of the galloping horse to the twist which he gives to the horns to bring the animal down.

Each rider is timed, and the one who performs the feat in the shortest time wins the prize. I saw it done in fifteen seconds—a turning over of the bull with the rapidity of a pistol shot; the leap from the horse and twist of horns and thud all consecutive. I saw it also done in two minutes and thirty seconds, where the bull dogger, holding on to the horns yet lying full length ahead of the bull, was rushed part way round the arena like a toboggan.

And besides this risky thrilling fun there was steer riding, which is also what might be called a part substitute for a bull fight. Riding at full pace on a rushing steer is a violent sport—clown's fun after the bull dogging. The bullocks are greatly enraged at being ridden, and they flounder and blunder and toss imaginary bundles in air and glare out of their eyes like searchlights while the wild boy above, with chaps on his legs, waves his sombrero in air and gives forth Indian war whoops all the while.

The great Western crowd laughs, so do the cowboys, so do the judges, and even the many horses ranged on all sides seem to look on with mirth. It hardly feels like this century—one thinks of medieval jollity, but comparisons are misleading. Such fun is of all time. The Athenians would have loved it. And bull dogging would have been a greater diversion in the Roman Coliseum than the Christians and the lions.

After the bull dogging there was roping of wild horses, saddling them and riding them. The horses were let loose in the arena and each cowboy had to catch his. As these had never been broken the excitement can be imagined, excitement of the horses, of the would-be riders, and of the crowd looking on. It was fully twenty minutes before even one cowboy had saddled and bridled a horse—and he could not make the animal go round the course.

Then we had a chuck-wagon race, wagons blundering round the course to given points where they had to stop, horses had to be taken out of shafts and put in imaginary corrals, rear flap of wagon to be let down, a fire lit on the ground and a pot of coffee boiled.

Then a Roman race and a relay race. And Idaho Bill in his alligator hide boots chewed his cigar all the while as if to him all the horses belonged, and the president of the reunion galloped from point to point of the arena judging the competitors in each race. And all the while a brass band played "I'm Nobody's Darling" and kindred airs.

In the evenings after all these doings there were cowboy dances and a rolling up and down Las Vegas' streets of a vaunting, leather-lined crowd. Some still rode about on their horses, but most had taken their steeds to their "corrals" and thrown them out their armfuls of green alfalfa for the night. The legless cowboy in his crimson shirt still rode his ebony horse and had evidently found liquor, for he rode into the main entrance of Las Vegas' only fine hotel, clattered round the stone hall and stood with his horse in the doorway of the main dining room, asking in a stentorian voice for a roast beef sandwich. The pallor in the faces of some Easterners who had "stopped off" on the way to California was most apparent. "Why don't they phone the police?" said one old man, mopping his brow with his handkerchief.

But the cowboy kept quite calm and, unloosing his rope, made a pass to rope the old man and roped a young girl with chestnut hair instead. She laughed, but was not a little alarmed, so the cowboy unloosed her and lassoed the cashier at the desk instead, and then the hotel manager. Then they brought him his beef sandwich, and with a splutter of hoofs he rode out of the hotel into the gay streets again.